Celestia Forums

Problem: Celestia crashes when I toggle to Full-Screen mode
System: 512MB AMD AthlonXP 1800+, Windows XP Pro Eng, fully patched
Graphics: VIA/S3 KM266, Driver 6.14, OpenGL v(Unkown-how to check?)
Program: Celestia v1.3.1

I have pretty new drivers from VIA, but it still crashes...
Is there any workaround?

Fenix?

I don't know if I really know what I'm talking about or not, but I've NEVER been able to convert from windowed mode to full screen on my Home XP system. If I'm not mistaken, you have to start the program in that mode. I know that's not much help, but that's about all I can tell you.

Perhaps Mr. Goyette or Mr. Ball can elucidate?

Take care, Bob

You start Celestia in Windowed mode, then you can toggle modes.

Use:
Render->Toggle Full Screen (or Alt+Enter)

Ah, but that's why I've never been able to do it. My XP goes "Blooey!"
whenever I try to switch modes after it's up and running.

Sorry...

Take care, Bob

Yes, then the problem occurs on your hardware too.

by-the-way: It works fine with nVidia cards.

Fenix*NBK* wrote:OpenGL v(Unkown-how to check?)

Celestia itself should be able to tell you;

First click on the help menu...

....Then simply click on OpenGL info.....

.....and you should see something like this;



regards
TERRIER

It is also very help- and useful to read the User's Guide!

You'll find there a section about requirements and stuff like this...

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html

OpenGL Version: 1.1 2.40.120

But it doesn't fix the problem.

Fenix,

Please see Bob's reply above. His graphics chip has the same version of OpenGL driver as yours (1.1). Celestia requires OpenGL version 1.4 to be fully functional. When your version is a lower version than required, certain features are bound to NOT work correctly, if at all.

Yes, I see, but where from do I get OGL 1.4 ?

You would need to check with the maufacturer of the chip / card. They may not support more recent versions, as Bob has found out regarding his own chip.

If they don't, and you really like Celestia, then it might be time to consider buying a more powerful 3-D graphics card (nVidia, ATI, etc.).

don wrote:You would need to check with the maufacturer of the chip / card. They may not support more recent versions, as Bob has found out regarding his own chip.

That is the case for sure... My Intel drivers do actually include a *few* of
the 1.4 functions, but not enough to give me the pleasure that a "Real"
graphics card would do.
I'll be getting around to it here one of these days. In the meantime
though, isn't it nice to know that most of Celestia's features can be
enjoyed by some shmuck with a basic PC and *no* special graphics
capability?

Take care, Bob

Actually, I think Intel touts the graphics chip your system has as the latest and greatest on-the-motherboard graphics chip available.

It does a LOT, including 3-D, compared to what the basic on-board VGA controllers used to do (800x600x256 colors, if you had a good one)!

OK, I like Celstia very much, but replacing a video card is too much...
Think about laptops - most people can't buy a new laptop, just because Celestia doesn't run on it. (while most laptops have cheap integrated graphics)

I understand perfectly that nVidia is a much better option, but you have to understand that Celestia *runs* with my VIA chip, and we just must try to build a celestia that way, to workaround the full-screen problems...

Fenix,

You might double check to make sure that the full-screen resolution you've selected in Celestia is one that your system actually supports. Depending on the display property settings, it's sometimes possible to select resolutions that your hardware can't use.

Also, does your system crash when Celestia switches to full-screen mode
while all 3D hardware acceleration is disabled?

(I'm sure you know how to disable it, but just to be thorough for other people who might be reading this...)

Hardware acceleration is controlled by a slider in the menu "control panel / display properties / settings tab / advanced button / troubleshoot tab /".

Moving the slider all the way to the left will cause XP to switch from using the graphics libraries provided by the graphics hardware vendor to using the software-only graphics library provided by Microsoft. It uses only the 2D hardware features available in all display systems. (Of course, Celestia will run much more slowly, but this is just to test where the bug might be.)

If your system still crashes when you switch to full-screen mode, then the problem may be in Celestia, although there's still the possibility that there's a real hardware problem of some kind in your computer.

If it does not crash when you're using the software-only drivers, then the problem is in the graphics library provided for your hardware, or in the 3D graphics hardware itself.

On the two systems where I run Celestia, I have no problems switching back and forth to full-screen mode when running with hardware acceleration disabled. On one of the systems, Celestia's full-screen resolution is different from the resolution used by XP's desktop window mode, so it has to change the screen refresh rate, too, which I'd expect would introduce additional problems for me. But it doesn't, other than the amount of time that the screen stays blank while the display syncs to the new refresh rate.

Bear in mind that Celestia has to depend on the OpenGL library being relatively bug-free. It's impractical for the author of Celestia's OpenGL code to program around all the different kinds of bugs that are encountered in the libraries provided by all the different graphics hardware vendors.

I hope these suggestions help a little.

Well, Full-Screen works in software mode. (and still almost OK, the program is still useful. Most games becomes dog-slow - less than 1 fps..., and many refuses to run in software)

selden wrote:
"Bear in mind that Celestia has to depend on the OpenGL library being relatively bug-free. It's impractical for the author of Celestia's OpenGL code to program around all the different kinds of bugs that are encountered in the libraries provided by all the different graphics hardware vendors. "

I just hoped to see a workaround...

But some games work in Full-Screen with OpenGL on my card, and some programs too...

-Fenix*NBK*

Well, remember that games make a lot of money. They're written by large teams of full-time programmers who have the resources to test their software on just about all possible hardware combinations. They can take the time to find and write workarounds for most driver bugs -- or can get the vendors to fix them. The same is true for many commercial programs, too.

Most of Celestia's OpenGL code is written by just one person in his spare time.

Off-topic:
Why this forum tends to forget me after a very short time?
I have to log-on almost each time I browse this forum.
==============================================
I have an idea how to solve this issue:

Is there a way to activate "safe mode" via command-line?

If yes, then I have a possible good solution for Windows users.

We should make a second Celestia icon in start menu, so that our InnoSetupScript will use the "safe mode" if the user wants to.

The safe mode should disable all the "OpenGL extras" leaving only the basic functionality.
Since most problems with Celestia are OpenGL graphics related, it will automatically make Celestia more stable in people's eyes.

This is an elegant way of solving bad things once and for all...